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Published on 6/21/2009

Safety at IP

I would just like to publically offer my congratulations to all at INTERNATIONAL PAPER on working safely for four million hours!

That's quite an achievement and also shows the concern IP has for their employees. Keep up the good work!

I would also like to extend my thanks to Deborah Feck for both of her excellent articles in The Georgetown Times. Ms. Feck's second article on May 29th was especially good as far as clarifying the issues raised by Mr. Bell.

It was enlightening to know that:

n IP has "reduced emissions to levels well below regulatory requirements"

n DHEC in April stated that "Overall, there were lower cases of cancer observed than expected" in Georgetown county from 2001 through 2005

n IP complies with the extensive federal and state regulations that specify the levels of various substances that may be released, and the mill's emissions are well within those limits

n Last but not least, I very much appreciated Ms. Feck's clarification of the two inaccurate statements by Mr. Bell concerning air quality and litigation.

Also I did not know that IP has almost 700 employees. This is great in an area where jobs are almost nil, many stores on Front Street are empty and there is little or no entertainment for the young or the old.

Thanks too for showing your concern for those needing assistance in Georgetown through your wonderful Grants Program.

International Paper is a blessing to many and may our good God keep it going strong for many years to come.

Sister Josephine Murphy

Georgetown

Concerns about Obama

Whatever gave the framers of our Constitution the strange idea that the people should have the power to run their own lives?

I am very concerned at the lack of confidence the newly elected administration has in the intelligence of the American people, and this administration's effort to take over every aspect of our lives.

Never in our history has there been such audacity and misuse of power in government. And never has our constitution suffered so many violations.

After taking control of banks, which began with the bail-out by President Bush, President Obama, along with the union, have asserted unprecedented control over banks and the auto industry.

Throughout America, privately owned auto dealerships are being forced to close their doors without any restitution for the hard work and money that was put into establishing these companies.

Many were family owned and have provided jobs and services to their respective cities for a great number of years. Example - a family in Minnesota has received notice that they must close their dealership, which has been profitable and has provided jobs and service to their city for 90 years.

The disaster of our financial system derived from the mistakes made during the Clinton administration, when banks were coerced into making loans to those who could not repay however, President Obama is using it to promote his own political socialist agenda.

President Obama is currently pushing for a nationalized health plan that has failed in other countries.

This plan forces citizens to leave their homeland to pursue adequate medical treatment in other countries when their own nationalized plan puts them on a two-year waiting list, even in life threatening conditions.

They were not reimbursed by their nationalized plan, although some were forced to mortgage their homes to get the care they needed. Americans cannot afford this kind of nationalized health plan.

Moreover, this president refused to participate in our National Day of Prayer -- the first American president in history to do so.

In addition, the Obama administration is removing the "Conscience Rule" to protect doctors and nurses who refuse to perform abortions due to religious reasons, willfully ignoring the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion.

And despite President Obama's claim to the contrary, we are not Muslim. We are a Christian/Judeo nation and are known as such throughout the world.

President Barack Obama admits his hope that Sonya Sotomayor will help him remove "In God We Trust" from American currency.

Our freedoms are under attack by this administration.

If we wish to retain those freedoms, we must hold tight to every word written in the U.S. Constitution and insist that the current administration do so.

Let it be known to this President that 'we the people' are in charge -- that we are "Endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights" -- that we will continue to print "In God We Trust" on our money and we are still "One Nation under God."

Bonnie Wheeler

Andrews

Rebuttal to Korten and Pibel

The Guest Column of June 11 entitled "Design for a New Economy" is more accurately described as a design for disaster. Korten and Pibel only demonstrated that they have no understanding of the causes of the economic boom and unavoidable bust that took place.

Their "solutions" are designed to create more centralized power rather than fix the problem.

Their glib observations would only exacerbate the recession and possibly throw us into a depression.

In his book, "The Housing Boom and Bust," Stanford economist Thomas Sowell, who is black, describes how social engineers in the 1970's declared housing shortages for the poor where none existed. However, Congress listened to them and passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 requiring banks to meet the credit needs of the poor and minorities, resulting in the granting of "subprime" loans (financing to those with bad credit or low income).

If the banks did not comply, any plans to expand, merge or acquire other banks would not be looked upon favorably by the regulators.

This was legal extortion. This was followed in the early 1990s by HUD pressuring Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to purchase these risky loans from the banks, thus creating more room on their books to create more risky loans.

Then two very creative professors from the University of Pennsylvania developed a way to trade these loans on the open market in the form of a security called a "derivative."

This enabled banks to make more of these loans and financial institutions purchased them throughout the world. It spread like a virus.

The point is that it was not the "destructive Wall Street system" or "big business" that created the problem.

It was social engineers like Mr. Korten and Mr. Pibel and big government that are guilty here.

They demanded change based on lies and distortions. We are paying the price.

They use words like "public interest," "universal home ownership," and "social balance" throughout the column.

What they do not ever say is who decides what the public interest or social balance is.

They want to redistribute the wealth in this country. They would have you invest only in those things which are "essential" and "green technologies."

They must mean something like ethanol which takes three gallons of gasoline to produce four gallons of ethanol and results in food shortages around the world.

Their assault on the rich is baseless. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the latest figures show that the top 5% of income earners paid 61% of federal income tax.

The top 40% paid 99.4% while the bottom 40% pay nothing and receive 3.8% from the tax system.

Increasing the tax burden does not result in higher revenues. It will result in their leaving their state or even the country.

One only has to look at NY, NJ, and MI for the losses and NC, GA, and AL for the gains.

The new economy zealots like to quote Lincoln, but you will not hear them repeat this one taken from a speech that he delivered in 1864: "Property is a positive in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is homeless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself..."

Donald McCullough

Pawleys Island